Willie Dewitt
SOC-11
Greetings, programs!
Several months ago I made a few posts here when I busted out some Classic Traveller (for the first time since around 1983) to run a bit of when my D&D group dropped to a minimum amount of players. Had a full group of AD&D since then, but am looking to try some CT again when critical players are missing. Next week on Thanksgiving Eve might afford that opportunity to give it another go. My players did seem to dig it and I hope would like more. It focused on the wonder of far flung planets and open space, and more or less did ad hoc "rulings not rules" type of things for combat and other tasks. Just wanted to avoid the lookups (I really don't memorize rules anymore) and keep the action moving because we seemed to have a lot of fun with the quiet moments. Heavy role-play seemed to be promoted by CT, at least for my group. Really, my approach is to look at the CT rules of books 1-3 like I would the original LLB's of OD&D if I had little experience with it. Heavily "winging it" to get things done like when we were kids with the game. We also only play about three hours, so time saving is a plus.
Having not even looked at the rules for months, I do remember some of my issues and "means to ends" with the rules, and thought so that I could maybe tidy it up a bit for our next session I would ask some opinions on house rules you use or have seen to take some of the crunch out of the game and get things done easily and fairly. Then I can keep it all in mind as I look at the rules again over the next few days. So let me throw it out there on a couple or three subjects and hopefully you can chime in with some tips for a guy who wants to keep things as simple as possible.
Combat: Simple enough really, but I didn't really like the movement and range stuff. I know this might not be a popular notion here ( :CoW: ), but I basically just went to hex-movement on the grease board with minis. Everybody has a 12 movement, with HTH weapons you could move half and make and attack. With guns or other missiles you could shift a hex and fire with no minus, or move up to half movement with a 1 penalty to hit per hex movies. As far as short, medium, and long ranges I just sort of used common sense and gave penalties for long range shots depending on the weapon.
Armor: I have to confess, I didn't really like the rules. Too much like those in OD&D. But without a real solution I actually sort of ignored it. No player had any real armor, but I think as of the last game they used some earnings to more heavily arm themselves, including flak jackets and the like. I really want to use a point absorbing system. So I would especially welcome some comments on how folk might have gone about this. And has anybody used an "activiation role" rule with point blocking armor? I loved that rule in the old Champions systems, accounting for armor that only covers part of the body. This of course complicates things, so I might not do that. But would love a simple system that doesn't involve pluses or minuses for hitting armor types, just point absorbing.
Ship to ship combat: Oy. A lot going on there. I don't want it to be a huge part of my games, but it must happen now and again. But I don't want it to go all night either. My next session might require some of that. So I was thinking of really going outside the box with that. Rely heavily on the skills of the crews and them dicing off; the superiority of one ship over another (in terms of...well, everything; weapons, armor, damage avoidance). Simple resolutions for how badly a ship is hit and if any major systems are damaged. I have to admit this is a section I really need to study again, but for now if anybody has advice for really boiling the ship to ship stuff down to very simple methods I'd be over the moon. I want it to be fun and for the characters actions to matter, but I just want it to not take much longer or be more involved than man to man stuff.
That's all for now, but I may have some more questions/comments after I look at the rules a bit more this weekend.
Cheers,
Willie
p.s. I've been looking at the old The Fantasy Trip stuff lately too, and see a lot of stuff there that I think would work well with CT. Anybody familiar with TFT who can chime in on this concept is worth extra points!
Several months ago I made a few posts here when I busted out some Classic Traveller (for the first time since around 1983) to run a bit of when my D&D group dropped to a minimum amount of players. Had a full group of AD&D since then, but am looking to try some CT again when critical players are missing. Next week on Thanksgiving Eve might afford that opportunity to give it another go. My players did seem to dig it and I hope would like more. It focused on the wonder of far flung planets and open space, and more or less did ad hoc "rulings not rules" type of things for combat and other tasks. Just wanted to avoid the lookups (I really don't memorize rules anymore) and keep the action moving because we seemed to have a lot of fun with the quiet moments. Heavy role-play seemed to be promoted by CT, at least for my group. Really, my approach is to look at the CT rules of books 1-3 like I would the original LLB's of OD&D if I had little experience with it. Heavily "winging it" to get things done like when we were kids with the game. We also only play about three hours, so time saving is a plus.
Having not even looked at the rules for months, I do remember some of my issues and "means to ends" with the rules, and thought so that I could maybe tidy it up a bit for our next session I would ask some opinions on house rules you use or have seen to take some of the crunch out of the game and get things done easily and fairly. Then I can keep it all in mind as I look at the rules again over the next few days. So let me throw it out there on a couple or three subjects and hopefully you can chime in with some tips for a guy who wants to keep things as simple as possible.
Combat: Simple enough really, but I didn't really like the movement and range stuff. I know this might not be a popular notion here ( :CoW: ), but I basically just went to hex-movement on the grease board with minis. Everybody has a 12 movement, with HTH weapons you could move half and make and attack. With guns or other missiles you could shift a hex and fire with no minus, or move up to half movement with a 1 penalty to hit per hex movies. As far as short, medium, and long ranges I just sort of used common sense and gave penalties for long range shots depending on the weapon.
Armor: I have to confess, I didn't really like the rules. Too much like those in OD&D. But without a real solution I actually sort of ignored it. No player had any real armor, but I think as of the last game they used some earnings to more heavily arm themselves, including flak jackets and the like. I really want to use a point absorbing system. So I would especially welcome some comments on how folk might have gone about this. And has anybody used an "activiation role" rule with point blocking armor? I loved that rule in the old Champions systems, accounting for armor that only covers part of the body. This of course complicates things, so I might not do that. But would love a simple system that doesn't involve pluses or minuses for hitting armor types, just point absorbing.
Ship to ship combat: Oy. A lot going on there. I don't want it to be a huge part of my games, but it must happen now and again. But I don't want it to go all night either. My next session might require some of that. So I was thinking of really going outside the box with that. Rely heavily on the skills of the crews and them dicing off; the superiority of one ship over another (in terms of...well, everything; weapons, armor, damage avoidance). Simple resolutions for how badly a ship is hit and if any major systems are damaged. I have to admit this is a section I really need to study again, but for now if anybody has advice for really boiling the ship to ship stuff down to very simple methods I'd be over the moon. I want it to be fun and for the characters actions to matter, but I just want it to not take much longer or be more involved than man to man stuff.
That's all for now, but I may have some more questions/comments after I look at the rules a bit more this weekend.
Cheers,
Willie
p.s. I've been looking at the old The Fantasy Trip stuff lately too, and see a lot of stuff there that I think would work well with CT. Anybody familiar with TFT who can chime in on this concept is worth extra points!